Week 6 – Second Presentation & Comments:

Week 5 of the project was declared a reading week so the group could attend the “Game City” Games Design event in Nottingham, and remaining time was dedicated to reading for my 3rd year dissertation project so there was no major work on the project until we returned at the start of week 6, in which my time came for presenting a 2nd showcase of the project’s progress. Our presentations this week included an industry visitor; Australian Games Designer Christian, who was able to offer advice to groups on their project work.

As before, response to the project was mixed. There was general agreement with the general concept of the project and the overall style, many felt the project ideas being shown were still focused too heavily on being ‘realism-based’ given the representational style, and suggested consider game mechanics that would suit the style more, similar to the ideas Dave had suggested in the first week. One idea put forward was having the assets in the game made out to be children’s toys (such as toy soldiers to represent the extremists, and wooden blocks for the houses). This was in idea I liked, and shall explore further in the coming weeks.

Virtually everyone, however, felt the character design of the girl didn’t fit in very well into the project; it felt more like something put in for the sake of it than put in for a purpose. Dave, who had in a short meeting at the end of week 4 declared it the weakest part of the entire project, explained her design was going too far back into the anime idea, and suggested she be dropped. Another colleague also pointed out that Anime is known for a focus on the ‘sexualisation’ of characters (focusing on qualities that enhance the attractiveness of a character). Even the remotest possibility of my five year old character being linked to sexual connotations was the nail in the coffin for the concept, and the character was therefore officially dropped from the concept.